Unit x festival

I have been hearing so many stories about different events going on all over the northern quarter as part of the unit x festival, so today Sarah and I decided to go and see some of them for ourselves. We visited the exhibitions in Kraak gallery, Incognito, Hilton House and Piccadily Place.

Here are some of my favourite pieces from the exhibitions...

It was so interesting to see how each group had interpreted the 175 brief, across all fields of art and design. Some galleries were fully collaborative pieces, and some were individual students work which also shows how the dynamics of each group can be so different. 

As a whole I have enjoyed the collaboration of unit x. I feel that I have gained a lot of skills in terms of organisation with venues and communicating and arranging work with people from different pathways, however as our project was very textiles based I feel like the fashion element of our project has been lost slightly. However, I am proud of how our group functioned and worked efficiently together, and the outcome that we produced shows how effective our collaboration was. Well done group 4!

Opening Night

Today was the first day of our exhibition being open to the public. As our exhibition includes a projector and a laptop, we have all devised rotas within our sub groups so that at least one person from each group is at the exhibition to keep an eye on the equipment and also to answer any questions from the public. 

This is our sub group 4 rota... 

Wednesday 

10-12 Martin Billington
Christine McDonald

12-2 Hannah Renolds

2-5 Beth McCallum
Shannon Murphy

Thursday

10-12 Lee Bennett

12-2 Laura Precious
Sam pitto

2-5 Mellissa Myott
Amelie Brizio

I arrived for my shift at 2 with Shannon and we sat doing our sketchbooks and manning the exhibition until 5. It wasn't very busy, but it was really interesting to have a look at the other three groups work and the students who did come to see it said that they really liked it. 

These are some images of the other groups work displayed around Terrace Bar...

Sarah and I then nipped into town for a much needed coffee then went back to Terrace bar for the private view at six. More people came to this event, however the staff at Terrace bar had double booked the exhibition room upstairs without letting any of the groups know so we could only keep the exhibition on until seven! My guests were all due to come to Terrace at half seven so none of them got to see our work which was such a shame. So in the end the private view didn't go as well as we had imagined, but it was good to get a bit of positive feedback from the people who did see it. 

Designs

After our tutorial with Eleanor, she encouraged Shannon and I to develop our mound idea into some garment ideas to keep our unit X based on fashion. I started to think about exaggerated proportions of knit, with huge cuffs and roll necks in really chunky wool, so started to do some designs developing this idea. 

Knitting Issues

When Shannon went to display the text next to our knitting instillation, she bumped into the tutors who were going around checking everyones displays. They did not like the way we had displayed the knitting, as they thought it had been done before and wasn't very original, so they suggester pushing the knit right into the corner and having it trailing down the wall instead of spread across two. They also said that it would be nice to have some images from the film up next to the knit o ink the two together. As it was only Shannon up there she posted on our group to ask if anyone else could go up and help her. However I was in town getting some things at the time and didn't get the notification on my unreliable phone so didn't see it until I was on my way home and it was too late. Luckily though Martin and Laura were around to help with printing the images and moving the knit around so in the end it didn't take too long. I am doing a shift at Terrace bar tomorrow so I cant wait to see what our new display looks like.

Holding On

Our final film!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFSV5I15TAQ

Setting up the exhibition

Today we met up at Terrace Bar to display bits of our left over knit. The knitting is being displayed on the brick walls in the bar area downstairs. We have been allocated a corner space so we started by separating out all the its of knit that were still in tact and worked well with the colour scheme in the space. We then draped this knit over the existing nails in the wall. We wanted the knit to look natural, almost like it was all growing out of the walls, so we started to hang it from the bars on the ceiling too to create a 3D installation.

However when the bar staff came over to see how we were getting on they said that the knit couldn't hang from the ceiling and had to be flat against the wall as it was a health and safety hazard, so we had to re-think our idea. We took everything down from the ceiling and flattened all the knit against the wall, more into the corner with wall tacks. we started the base of the instillation with  bigger bits of knit attached to the wall, then draped the chain and finger knitting over the top, to recreate the look of the mound. 

                                   

We also decided that we needed a plaque explaining the ideas behind the knitting, so Shannon is going to print off the paragraph we use for the film to display next to our work, as the film will be played upstairs so they won't actually be together. 

I was happy with the end result of our knit installation, we worked really well as a team to display it and listened to each others ideas to create something that everyone was happy with. 

Filming!!

At last, today we finally filmed our stop motion piece! It feels like we have been building up to this for months, so it was really rewarding to finally see all our effort and planning come through in the shoot. We had made a brief outline of how we wanted the film to run which made organising the photo sequences much easier and quicker so that our model wasn't stood around all day. We all got into the studio at nine to set up the lights and do a couple of test shots before Melissa and her grandma arrived at ten. We had added a little bit more knitting onto the mound between tuesday and today so the overall impact was really effective when it was on.

The hardest element of filming was trying to keep everything consistent and moving the knitting away slowly so there would be no huge leaps or gaps in the stop motion film. Our model was very co-operative though which made the process easier and she understood the message we were trying to put across through the film. 

We started by just pulling sections of the knit out and away from the original mound, then began to cut pieces off with the scissors. We also filmed some close up shots of the knitting unravelling, or Sandra trying to re-knit some pieces back into the mound. We aren't really sure how these will look in the end film so we are just going to wait until it is all put together. 

                                      

                                                 

Overall I was really happy with how our day of filming went, from the photos that I saw on the camera it looks really effective and hopefully will all come together over the weekend. We worked really hard and well as a group and all had an input in the filming/deconstruction of the mound. Im just so glad it done!

After we had finished filming, we also had a tutorial with Eleanor to discuss final plans for the film and the instillation at Terrace bar. Here are the notes from the tutorial...

Eleanor liked the idea of displaying some of the knit remnants up in Terrace, and she suggested using nails or tacks to secure it to the walls. The film also has to be sent to Sophie by 2:00pm on Monday so that it can all be edited together on a reel with the other groups films. We also need to devise a rota for when the instillation will be up in Terrace so that at least one person from each group is there at all times to answer any questions and just keep an eye on the exhibition.